The Triumph of Caesar (32 page)

Cicero was suffering a terrible year. First, his beloved daughter died in childbirth. When Publilia made some tactless comment about the tragedy, Cicero summarily divorced her. Alone and miserable, with his personal life in shambles and his political ambitions at an end, he had withdrawn to one of his country estates to seek the consolations of philosophy.

Cleopatra was back in Egypt. By all accounts, she was a competent ruler and a steadfast ally of Rome. She was said to be planning another visit to Rome in the coming year. Her son remained unacknowledged by Caesar.

Arsinoë was residing in exile in Ephesus. At Rupa's insistence, I sent her a letter asking after her health. She never replied. Perhaps the letter was seized by her keepers.

Despite Caesar's apparent invincibility, his wife's morbid dread of the future was as acute as ever. Following the death of Porsenna, Calpurnia found a new haruspex. His name was Spurinna, and he appeared to exercise an equally powerful hold over her.

Now Caesar was on his way back to Rome, where preparations were underway for his Spanish Triumph. The event was to be stupendous, eclipsing even last year's triumphs. I would have dreaded the forthcoming pomp and ceremony, but for one reason: to take part in the planning, arriving ahead of Caesar, my son Meto was finally returning to Rome.

I expected him at any moment. Diana had promised to show him immediately to the garden upon his arrival, so that I might see him alone for a little while before the rest of the family greeted him and claimed his attention.

Shadows were lengthening. The September air grew chill. I wrapped my cloak around me. I was beginning to despair of his arrival, when Diana appeared. I read the smile on her face. Meto stepped from behind her. Diana withdrew.

I rose to embrace him. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. When at last I stepped back, I did what I always did upon seeing him after a long absence: I surveyed his body for any new scars and checked his limbs for any signs of lameness. But the gods continued to protect him, despite the terrible risks he took in battle. He was as sound and whole as when I last saw him.

How remarkably handsome he had become! I can say this without vanity, since he was not of my making.

Mopsus brought wine and water. Meto asked about the family.

"All are well," I said. "They'll join us soon. Even your brother is here, if you can believe it. I almost never see Eco these days. He got back just yesterday from a job that took him all the way to Athens."

Meto laughed. "Eco the Finder! He must stay very busy, seeking truth and justice for the people of Rome while you sit here in your garden, Papa, basking in your retirement."

I merely nodded.

Meto inquired about events in Rome. I told him the latest news, then asked about his life on the battlefield.

"Actually, now that the fighting is over, I've put aside my sword and picked up my stylus," he said. "I spend most of my time working on the latest volume of Caesar's memoirs."

"It must be a great challenge, to distill such extraordinary experiences into a few words."

"Indeed! But the research is the biggest challenge."

"Research? It's a memoir, not a work of history. You lived every moment of it. Or rather, Caesar did."

"Yes, but Caesar is very keen to verify every factual statement and all the various claims he makes. For example, did you know that he's fought a total of fifty pitched battles? Fifty! That's a record, as far as I can determine—more than any other commander in the history of Rome. The closest competitor I can find is Marcus Marcellus, the conqueror of Syracuse, who lived a hundred and fifty years ago. And he fought only thirty-nine battles."

"How remarkable," I said. "Fifty battles . . ." How many men had died in those battles? How many had been maimed for life? How many women and children had been enslaved? Fifty was a large, round number. It would look very impressive in Caesar's memoirs.

"And here's another remarkable figure," said Meto. He spoke in a hush. He was excited to share his work with me, and I was touched. "Of course, it isn't exact, because making such a calculation presents all sorts of difficulties and possibilities for error—overcounting, undercounting, and so forth—but I did the best I could, and I think I did a pretty good job."

"A good job with what?"

"Caesar asked me to calculate the number of those who died as a result of all his campaigns—well, those who were actually killed in battle, not counting citizens who died from hardship and disease and such; although we have some idea of that figure from the census he commissioned last year that shows the population of the city is only half what it was before the civil war."

"Only half?" I whispered. Half the population of Rome, wiped from the face of the earth . . .

"Anyway, after I gathered all the information I could, and sorted through all the various estimates, the number I came up with was one million one hundred and ninety-two thousand."

I wrinkled my brow. "What exactly does that number represent?"

"The number of people killed by Caesar in his fifty battles."

"How extraordinary," I said; though, in fact, the number meant nothing to me. How could anyone grasp such a number? I tried to imagine seeing the faces of all those 1,192,000 who had died, one at a time. It was inconceivable. No mortal could hold such a number in his head. A great many people had died; that was all one could say, really.

Apparently Caesar agreed. Meto shook his head ruefully. "And after all that work, all my careful calculations, Caesar has decided he doesn't want the number to appear in his memoirs. Can you imagine that?"

"Actually, I can," I said quietly.

"Ah, well, that number's likely to be superseded in the near future, anyway," said Meto. "Now that he's conquered the whole of the Mediterranean, it's almost inevitable that Caesar will look east and invade Parthia. That means mounting a huge expedition, probably by way of Egypt, perhaps as soon as next year."

"More battles, to spoil that perfect round number of fifty?" I said.

"Yes, many more battles."

"And more deaths?"

"A great many deaths, undoubtedly," said Meto.

Exactly a year ago, I had made a choice that saved Caesar's life. Thinking back to that moment, I felt a twinge of something like regret. How many more men would die before Caesar breathed his last?

But in the next instant the feeling vanished, for suddenly Bethesda appeared, with a broad smile on her face. At the sight of Meto, she trembled with joy.

"Husband, we can wait no longer. It's our turn now to welcome Meto home!"

A moment later, they all came running into the garden—Diana and Davus and their squealing children, Eco and Menenia and the golden-haired twins, silent Rupa and the laughing slave boys.

Those I loved were still alive, and we were all together.

Author's Note

Our information about the triumphs of Caesar in 46 b.c. comes from various sources. These are the principle citations:

Appian,
Roman History
, 2: 101–102
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
, 43: 14, 19–24, 27; 51: 22
Pliny,
Natural History
, 7.92, 9.171, 14.97
Plutarch,
Caesar
, 55
Suetonius,
Augustus
, 8
Suetonius,
Caesar
, 37–39, 49, 51, 52, 78

Regarding the exact dates of the triumphs, the best supposition I have found is by Chris Bennett at his Web site dealing with Egyptian royal genealogy (
www.geocities.com/christopherjbennett
). His notes on Cleopatra's sister Arsinoë IV make the most clearly argued case I have read for determining the dates of the four triumphs.

Our knowledge of the playwrights Laberius and Syrus, and some fragments of their works, can be found in the
Saturnalia
of Macrobius (2.3.9–10; 2.6.6; 2.7.1–11; 6.5.15; 7.3.8), the
Satyricon
of Petronius (55), Suetonius (
Caesar
, 39), and some letters by Cicero (
ad Familia
7.11 and 12.18.2;
ad Atticus
14.2). Pliny (8.209) tells us that Syrus's nickname was Pig's Paunch.

The "King of the Hill" ditty in Chapter XVI is adapted from Horace's
Epistles
(1.1). Arcesilaus the artist previously appeared in my short story "The Cherries of Lucullus" (in the collection
A Gladiator Dies Only Once
.)

Plutarch (
Caesar
, 55) and Appian (2: 102) tell us that the census commissioned by Caesar found that the population of Rome had been reduced by half as a result of the civil war. Pliny (7.92) cites Caesar's fifty battles and provides the number of the dead mentioned by Meto in Chapter XXII.

While working on
The Triumph of Caesar
, my favorite books by modern historians were Arthur Weigall's
The Life and Times of Marc Antony
(G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1931) and Jack Lindsay's
Marc Antony: His World and His Contemporaries
(Rout-ledge, 1936). These two authors never fail to stimulate and entertain.

For visual inspiration, we can turn to one of the great masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance,
The Triumphs of Caesar
, a series of nine monumental paintings by Andrea Mantegna (ca. 1431–1506). Inspired both by literary accounts and by the collection of antiquities owned by his patrons, the Gonzaga family of Mantua, Mantegna created one of the first major attempts to visualize the ancient Roman world. The paintings are on permanent display at Hampton Court Palace in London.

Erich Gruen has speculated that the statue of Cleopatra in the Temple of Venus Genetrix was placed there not by Julius Caesar (as Appian explicitly states), but later, by Augustus, as a trophy after the queen's defeat and death. This is an eminently sensible idea; nevertheless, I prefer to take Appian at his word. Caesar's installation of the statue presents us with a puzzle, to be sure, but so do many actions taken by our own leaders. Because an act by, say, a president of the United States did not make sense to a reasonable person does not mean that the act did not take place. I would suggest that the type of man who thinks he can rule the world is not, by definition, a reasonable man, and the actions of such men inevitably leave us with vexed questions that defy sensible explanation by sensible historians. Gruen's essay "Cleopatra in Rome: Facts and Fantasies" can be found in
Myth, History and Culture in Republican Rome: Studies in Honour of T. P. Wiseman
, edited by David Braund and Christopher Gill (University of Exeter Press, 2003).

For reading and commenting on the first draft, my thanks to Penni Kimmel and Rick Solomon. For all his hard work, high spirits, and unfailing sangfroid, my thanks to Alan Nevins, my agent. And my heartfelt thanks to my longtime editor, Keith Kahla, to whom this book is dedicated. Since the days of
Roman Blood
, Keith, Gordianus, and the Finder's creator have gone through many trials and triumphs together.

Caesar and his legacy present a complexity that mirrors that of our own times. Like Gordianus, I find myself endlessly fascinated by the man, and endlessly perplexed. The life of Caesar provides generous inspiration to both the historian, who deals in facts, and the novelist, who deals in the ironies and ambiguities of human existence and the tenuous nature of all knowledge.